


Constants

by Elviella



Category: The Dalemark Quartet - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:14:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elviella/pseuds/Elviella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kialan, Moril, and music through the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Constants

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ashura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashura/gifts).



> HAPPY YULETIDE AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS WHATEVER YOU CELEBRATE, DEAR RECIPIENT. I really hope you enjoy this; I'm sorry for not writing something particularly shippy, but I hope you will still like it. With endless thanks to [redacted] for being wonderful human beings that cheered me on while panicking about this story.

**Hannart**

The tiles of the roof are warm under Moril's body and hands, the afternoon sun hot and burning red on his closed eyelids. When he hears movement near him, he tries hard not to jump immediately alert, despite the general feeling of peace. There's the sound of a heavy body meeting the surface of the roof near him and a sigh. Moril puts a hand over his eyes and opens them.

"Fancy meeting you here", says Kialan, the ends of his fair hair almost tranlucent in the sunlight.

Moril has been lying there since the end of his day's classes. He likes that about Hannart; you can climb up on roofs and walk barefoot without anyone making much of a fuss over it. You can lie three storeys over the ground for hours and people will let you do that in peace - at least for a while. Even his teachers don't seem to mind his milky vagueness, for the most part.

Moril pushes himself up on his elbows first, then on a sitting position. Kialan's feet are dangling over the edge of the roof, and under them he can see the central courtyard spread out, and then the crowded, almost too welcoming colourful houses of the city, and then the hills and the mountain and the pipes of the great organ gleaming under the sun.

"Hello", says Moril finally.

Brid is probably still in a class; she is going to enroll in Gardale soon, and in typical Brid fashion she has jumped head first in the studying necessary for the Law school. She studies even more than Kialan, and Kialan seems to have quite a pressure on him to study a lot, and to indulge in that pressure.

"Care to come for a walk?" Kialan says, turning slightly to face him.

Moril likes the peacefulness of the roof; the noise from the courtyard and the mansion is like music up there, like most of Hannart sounds like music when you walk around it. Kialan does seem to have done at least some work to find him up here, so Moril nods, not really minding.

Kialan seems somehow bigger but lighter in Hannart, as if being in his birthplace has filled out his frame somehow. He enjoys showing Brid and Moril the hidden corners of Keril's mansion and his favourite places in the city, and often buys them food from the stalls, explaining the reason why this tastes this particular way or what that is made of.

"Want to go see the organ?", he says when their feet, one pair nicely booted and one bare, meet the ground. "You should probably put on some boots for that", he adds.

Seeing the organ from up close is, Moril feels, worth it, so he does run to put them on, passing by Brid reciting some important historical fact or the other in her best voice as he goes to his room. When he meets Kialan on the courtyard again, he has a small packet of what smells like bread and cheese with him.

It's a long way out of the city and up on the hill; the houses start to be fewer and far between and to have bigger gardens as they walk on, the streets less crowded. Moril notices nice notes of colour here and there, like blue boots on the dirty brownish of the ground or a faint yellow curtain in a window somewhere. The patterns are interesting, but Moril has been in Hannart for a while now and he feels like he can almost predict how the next corner will look like.

A good thing about Kialan now, he thinks, is that Kialan doesn't mind not talking. He doesn't sulk anymore, but also, unlike Brid, he doesn't feel the need to talk all of the time. Now that he's in Hannart, he seems quite good at being patient and not annoyed by Moril's way of approaching conversation.

There are still houses, smaller ones, in the foot of the hill, and few trees. They keep the area clean for the organ, Kialan says. The other side is still full of trees and bushes. The main part of the organ is there, with great mechanical pumps that are attached with a complex mechanism to the pipes. They need a whole dozen of people to make it work, Kialan explains, which is not at all surprising. Moril ponders this kind of teamwork in music, so different for the teamwork needed for a show.

The pipes, huge, loom over them. There's power in this organ, Moril feels, very different from the kind of power in the old cwidder. There are carvings in the base of the pipes, too, but that's where the similarities end. The power of the organ feels decidedly less ancient than that of the cwidder, for one, and less demanding. 

There's a path around the organ, with carved old steps going all the way up to the hill. They pass by the big pumps, each needing a grown man to work it, and the pipes, first the shorter stumpy ones, then, slowly, towards the tallest ones. 

"Do you know how to play the organ?" Moril asks as they approach the top of the hill.

Kialan turns around to look at him. "Sadly, no. Only the cwidder and the hand organ, and that not so well. They learn how to play the organ in teams. It must be nice."

From up here, the city looks much smaller than it did from Moril's favourite part of the roof. The organ is a grand, welcoming presence, yet Moril feels quite clearly, as he has felt since he arrived, that he won't be staying for very long. It's not that he doesn't like Hannart; it's just that he's probably not one of the people who are meant to stay somewhere, and he feels a tiny hint of satisfaction for that.

"I think", he starts, "that I am going to be leaving soon."

Kialan chuckles. "Oh, but we know", he says. "You have that look about you."

"I hope you don't mind", Moril says, probably because it's the proper thing to do. He wouldn't want to upset Kialan, or his mother, or even Keril. "I do like Hannart."

"Well, I certainly don't mind. My father will, a bit. but it's all right, I don't think anyone thought you would be able to stay for long."

Moril gives a vague smile. "I just don't know how I'm gonna leave yet. I don't have a horse."

You can't see as far as Flenpass from here, but it's not like he needs to see it to have that reminder. 

Kialan shrugs. "The singers come and go, you'll find a way."

It's not nearly sunset yet, but the sky has a peculiar sort of colour near the horizon. Moril wonders if Kialan would like to leave Hannart too. In the end, he thinks not.

They eat the bread, and the cheese, and some cherries Kialan had in his pocket. He will probably miss talking to Kialan, Moril thinks, now that he has this easy-going air about him. It comes with Kialan's way of managing to understand his vagueness, this way they have built for communicating, but at least he knows he won't mind if he doesn't visit so often. Later, when the sky is red like Moril's hair and the sun is about to set, the climb down the hill and Moril feels quite satisfied, having said at least one goodbye.

 

**Gardale**

The day they drop Brid off at Gardale is a rainy one; the sky has been dark since the morning and when the afternoon comes and the students have to bid their families goodbye, Brid hugs Moril and Dagner under the steady fall of the rain. It's not one of the thunders of summer, this one, but one of the first rainy days of the autumn. The scent of wet soil hangs heavy around them. The last they see of Brid, she's a dark movement of a hand waving at them from under the gate.

As the low, flat roofs of the Law school fade away, the rain thickens. Hestefan murmurs in his usual way that it's good they had the time to give a show earlier, and Fenna absent-mindedly agrees. Moril sees her look out of the canvas covering the cart and knows it's because she's going to miss Dagner. He shrugs it off; he can understand it because he's heard people sing of it, but not much more than that.

"OI!", he hears one of the riders from Hannart shout at them and sees him approach to talk to them.

"We are going to stay at the inn in Gardale until the rain cuts down", Moril hears him say. "You are our guests for the evening, if you desire."

Fenna looks at Hestefan hopefully, and even he can't grouch. It's a very good opportunity to sleep on a real bed, especially a dry one, so he nods at the rider, who salutes him and goes back to his companions.

In the end, they also give a show in the inn; people are gathered to keep out of the rain, and many are glad to see the Singers from the same morning. The inn-keeper greets them with great heartiness; a buzz of anticipation runs through the crowd and a lot of people raise their cups towards them. It's a makeshift kind of show but everyone seems to enjoy it and Hestefan is red from the beer under his beard. Moril is also glad; this sort of show is mostly based on Hestefan's storytelling and a few songs sung by Fenna in her sweet voice, very appropriate for such a place. He doesn't even have to use the big cwidder, just one of the smaller ones, to underline Hestefan's low notes. Still, a lot of people try to talk to him later, all very cheerfully, about his opinion on this song or the other and how he likes traveling around and being a Singer. He doesn't always have an answer, and his vague way of answering discourages many people. The Adon of Hannart coming to sit next to him probably has some effect too.

"So we meet again", says Kialan cheerfully, even though they'd already greeted each other earlier in the morning. 

Moril smiles at him over his full plate of meat in red sauce. "How are you?" he says.

"Very glad I'm not in Brid's place and at the start of the term in such a weather."

"She would flip you for that, you know. She is really fond of this school already."

"I hope she continues to be so", Kialan says. "Are you going to come back to Hannart with us tomorrow? We haven't seen a Singer for some time."

Moril takes a look around. Hestefan, talking with the inn-keeper, seems ready to fall asleep on the spot.

"I don't think so, I think Hestefan would like to go towards Loviath. It's his usual route, Fenna says. And Hannart has its own music, at least."

"As much is true", Kialan says wisely and takes another sip of his beer.

The noise of the inn and the rain outside are comforting; Kialan besides him, eyes obscured by his hair, is also a thing he finds comforting in spite of himself.

"Do you think Hestefan would mind if I played one of his cwidders?", Kialan asks after a bit, eyes gleaming mischievously. "I haven't practiced in such a long time."

"You can play the one I use", Moril says. "Later, maybe. If you play now, you'll be the centre of attention."

"Not the best for someone out of practice, huh?", Kialan smiles.

Moril looks around.

"Come upstairs with me, you can help me practice."

Kialan grins.

He likes playing with Kialan, after so long of only practicing with Fenna or Hestefan. Kialan plays a bit like Dagner, and a little like Lenina; it's familiar to practice with him. He doesn't mind when he makes mistakes, and he takes it seriously in an offhand way. Moril likes that. They go through one of the old songs, in Moril's particular way of playing it. It's not a show; no-one is going to give them an opinion; and Kialan respects Moril's way of doing things. For now, this is really quite good.

 

**Hannart, again**

There's a knock on Moril's open door, and when he lifts his eyes from the document he's reading, he sees Kialan standing in the door frame.

"Goodmorning, Schoolmaster", he says cheekily.

"Good day to you as well, Earl", Moril replies.

"Are you going to invite me in, or am I going to stand here for the better part of the day?", Kialan says and doesn't wait for an answer. Instead, he comes to sit on the chair in front of Moril's desk.

Moril is not sure how he feels about his desk, or the chairs in front of it, or the fact that he has an office. He didn't want one, and he'd told Brid so, but she'd looked at him incredulously and said, but Moril, we are managing a _school_ , and we need to do it the proper way. Given that Brid was the one of them to have actually attended a school, she was probably right.

"So, Earl, to what do I owe this gracious visit?", he jokes.

"I came to ask if you would like a portrait of you commissioned. You know, as you're a school founder and all."

Moril's eyes turn to the right, then to the left.

"I thought so", says Kialan. "No portrait for you, then."

Unlike Kialan, who can now demonstrate a short but full golden beard, Moril has remained cleanly shaven. There's something about a beard and being a schoolmaster that would remind him of Hestefan, and even so many years later he does not want his own face to remind him of that.

"Also, I wanted to see how the school's doing", Kialan adds. His hair is glowing in the sunlight, still the same untamely mane. 

"I am sure Brid could do a better job to inform you on that", Moril says.

Kialan gives a disbelieving chuckle.

"All right then. I guess you do have to ask the right thing, always. How are your classes going, Master Clennensson? Or should I come and see for myself?"

"You should better stay put", Moril says. "The classes are going well, but I'm not that good a teacher."

"Too absent-minded for that?"

Moril shrugs; he doesn't mind teaching, but he doesn't love it either; he is more interested in letting the students figure out their own way of wanting to do things, much as he did their age, than teaching them how to do them.

"Well, Brid says the kids like you a lot."

"I'm not strict and they can do what they want, so I suppose they like that."

There's quite a few cwidders in the room, and a couple of other instruments as well. The old cwidder he doesn't feel like calling his own is closest to him. There are things he keeps around and things he needs to push about in his mind; the cwidder belongs in both categories.

"You're fairly good at the cwidder yourself", he says, in the end. "Maybe you could teach a class."

Kialan laughs at that.

"Maybe not. However", he says and gets up, "show me around, will you?"

When Moril gets up, Kialan smiles, but his eyes are serious. His hand, open palmed, first grasps his arm, then pats him heavily, once, twice, on the back. Moril smiles back; a faint, rare smile. Outside, the kids are running down the corridors, so very young and unassuming. He looks back at the old, heavy cwidder. There's a weight in his chest like an anchor that is probably never going to leave him, he knows. It's his own burden to bear. He has done it for decades now, and he will continue to do so, in his own way. 

He follows Kialan outside and closes the door behind him.


End file.
